


The Hawk's Phoenix

by bookstorequeer



Series: Gamehawking [5]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 23:52:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookstorequeer/pseuds/bookstorequeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil talked and explained what he knew about certain conditions post-mortem that, if met, brought him back from what seemed to be death, with no memories of having been gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hawk's Phoenix

It’s not something that Special Agent Phil Coulson can easily explain. He tries. He did his best to explain the ins and outs of it to Clint when his death first came up. Judging by the man’s face when he’d turned up at Stark’s three months later, Phil’s fairly certain that he wasn’t clear enough. And he’d thought the flowcharts were overkill…  
  
The rest of the Avengers took it more or less in stride, given that all of them seemed to have a propensity for coming back from the “assumed dead.” What made them pause and take a longer look was how much younger he was now. Agent Romanov made a crack about Clint being a cradle robber and Phil had to physically pull the man out of their nest, three days later, because enough was enough and he was sick of eating in the bed.  
  
That afternoon, he followed Stark down to his lab and asked the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist what he knew about super-genetics. Stark told him to come back the next morning and he spent the night overheated beneath down, primaries, and flesh and blood. Clint was reluctant to let him go when morning came but Coulson promised an explanation and a Lord of the Rings marathon, where they could throw popcorn at all the misfired arrows that Clint would have nailed.  
  
“Stark.”  
  
“Agent Phil.”  
  
“You can just call me Phil, Tony,” he said, letting himself in. Stark raised an eyebrow at his access but he only greeted JARVIS and looked over the genius’s shoulder at the computer screen.  
  
“Still reading about super-genetics, Stark?”  
  
“I fell asleep,” the rogue mechanic admitted with a dismissive wave, “but I’ve read enough. It's all mutation or radiation, affecting the natural genetics of a sometimes-human body. Or, you know, aliens. I take it this is you?”  
  
“As close as I can figure it,” Phil admitted. Trying to match his own cells to Tony’s molecular comparisons between humans and known aliens, he sighed. “I’m not all that sure about particular details; I was adopted.”  
  
“Tell me about it,” the magnetic multi-millionaire prompted, asking JARVIS to take notes before sprawling languidly.  
  
Phil talked and explained what he knew about certain conditions post-mortem that, if met, brought him back from what seemed to be death, with no memories of having been gone. He couldn’t seem to control how long it took but he had a feeling that it had been months this time rather than the days it had taken before, because he needed to be himself when he came back. He couldn’t afford the years to grow up again because he had someone he was coming back to. Tony just rolled his eyes and made sure JARVIS noted it all down.  
  
He told Tony about vague feelings of things in his life that he needed to let happen; he could try to change these instants if he wanted but there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t result in much worse happening. He talked long enough that his throat was sore and Clint had wandered down in search of him, ending up perched in a high corner, sighting along the Nerf bow that Stark had given him for use in the tower. Phil hid a smile in the water glass left at his elbow when a dart thwacked onto Tony’s mug as the man reached for it.  
  
Standing and thanking the genius for his time, Phil collected his wayward archer and herded him back up stairs; he had a marathon to sleep through while Clint rolled his eyes at bad archery and hairy hobbits. Phil liked quiet moments with his Hawk the best, especially when no one in the tower batted an eye.  
  
  
Three days later, wandering into the kitchen mostly, kind of awake, Phil found Dr. Banner staring at him, a pile of papers held loosely.  
  
“So you don’t know how it works?”  
  
He paused because it was before 0500 and he’d slept uneasily with Clint’s nightmares between them, but nodded.  
  
“Never found an instruction manuel but I’ve figured a few things out along the way.”  
  
Banner nodded, rubbing his eyes like he too had been awake far too long.  
  
“And the ritual cremation?”  
  
With a sigh, Coulson set his caffeine aside and sat down. He wanted to be quick; he’d left his bird sleeping and knew the other man would wake if left alone too long.  
  
“The first time I died, I didn’t know I could come back. The mausoleum I was buried in apparently fell victim to arson and they found a baby in the ashes.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
“Sometimes it feels like I have a finite number of reincarnations in me,” Phil confessed, what he couldn’t tell Clint and hadn’t told Stark.  
  
“I think that’s a human thing.” Banner’s grin was dry and Phil clapped his shoulder on the way to another empty mug and a refill for his own cup.  
  
He found Clint awake and reading papers the Agent had stepped over out the door. He laughed when they were a memo on his “condition” written in Stark snark on 8.5x11. His Hawk seemed fascinated, though, so Phil just read over his shoulder and made sure that the coffee was within reach. He fell asleep somewhere between pages 53 and 67—since he’d already done his own research into superhuman genetics and theories of reincarnation to figure out where, if anywhere, he fit—and woke when Barton turned the light on brighter to better see the arrows he was fletching.  
  
“Okay, Eyas?” he murmured, stretching and smiling a little at the brush of hair against his up-stretched arm.  
  
“Okay,” the hawk agreed, finishing his current projectile and setting everything aside.  
  
“I’m sorry I worried and hurt you,” the man sighed when the lights were down again and the twilight made it easier to apologize. Clint nodded and threw an arm around his body like Phil was no longer allowed to go anywhere without his down-crested mate. He was okay with that.  
  
He poked tentative at the slumbering sense of “future” in his head and when he was certain there were no portents of death waiting, Phil closed his eyes. His bird had weeks of sleep to catch up on and Agent Coulson would have to return to the world eventually. He’d been ignoring Fury’s increasingly frequent calls since the first remote camera in New York had trained on him, and knew there would be hell to pay for it. But for the moment, Philip John Coulson was content.  
  
He had a feeling that with friends and co-workers like the Avengers, he was going to need all the rest he could get, whenever he could get it.  
  
  
  
When he died next and everyone told him that Clint was beside himself, railing at Fury until even the Colonel was willing to mention it upon his return, Phil made a point to sit down with the angry acrobat. His skin was still new, muscles twinging abut feeling better for the stretch as he paced.  
  
“If I tell you the formula—“ since he  _refused_ to call it a ‘ritual,’ despite the magic he’d seen Loki do, “—will you calm down?”  
  
“Me and JARVIS.”  
  
“JARVIS?”  
  
“To tell everyone else if—if I’m—”  
  
Phil shook his head and didn’t tell his hawk that he didn’t think he really wanted to return without him. Instead he agreed and sat down for an explanation recorded and saved in the AI’s most secure memory banks. Later, when Clint was out at the archery range with Natasha and, strangely,  _Steve_ , Phil told JARVIS the only way that his own research had found to stay dead. He had a feeling, one of those feelings that he had learned to listen to, that it would work and he made sure JARVIS was clear under which incredibly specific circumstances it should be used. It was almost like writing a will but he’d already done that—Clint got everything he would have wanted and Phil's memorabilia went to the Captain America Museum on Essex and Broadway, across from Seward Park—and he felt lighter for having done it.  
  
When Clint finally came home, sweaty and grinning and saying something about Rogers owing him $50, Phil shushed him with the promise of an  _Arrow_ episode marathon and set about ordering in Thai because he knew it was the birdbrain’s favourite. He liked the way it made Clint grin at him on the way past to the shower, teasing Steve as he went about making bets with sharpshooters.  
  
Coulson was proud of how far Barton had come from a shell-shocked sharpshooter to this happy, surprisingly flirty, man that he knew. If you asked him, he’d say he had nothing to do with it, that he’d just let Clint come out of his shock at his own pace. If you asked the Hawk, you’d get a much different answer but it really didn’t matter what any of them had to say about it, when even Thor had noticed Clint’s recent happiness, upon Phil’s return.  
  
The Asgardian had, on Tony’s prompting, of course, asked if there would be any nestlings soon. They’d laughed it off and Phil said that he already spent too much of his time babysitting Stark. He’d snickered until Clint was nearly crying at Tony’s indignant muttering, and made a mental note to butter up JARVIS into keeping the genius-playboy-billionaire out of their aerie for the next few weeks until Tony got distracted with building something else shiny, loud, and impossibly complicated.  
  
Phil found that he was unexpected happy when a blond head settled onto his shoulder and no one seemed to notice the arm he slipped around Clint's waist. He laughed beneath his breath as Steve distracted Tony with a quiet question about something or another too technological for him to grasp even though Phil had seen him using that toaster just the other day. He closed his eyes to better take it in and didn't wake when somebody spread a blanket over the both of them. He woke the next morning to Tony taking pictures of the archer drooling on his chest and loved Clint's laugh when he re-enacted Steve herding Tony out of the room with promises of waffles and whipped cream. He went willingly when the breakfast seemed to appeal to hawks as well as geniuses. Even Agents liked waffles.


End file.
